L’Oreal uses first ever male model in a cosmetics campaign
The #YoursTruly UK campaign centres around diversity, increasingly a hot ticket marketing bid within beauty: L’Oréal notes that its campaign features 23 of the UK’s “most influential and inspirational ambassadors for diversity”.
Strikingly, the line-up includes Gary Thompson, blogger and makeup artist, also known as The Plastic Boy - the first man to front a mass market colour cosmetics campaign.
The move by the global beauty leader comes as confirmation that on the back of the rise of emphasis on diversity in beauty, the male grooming segment is now branching out from personal care into makeup.
Multicultural beauty
The new campaign looks to promote the company’s True Match foundation, which, L’Oréal states, offers 23 different shades that match with 98% of the UK’s skin tones - each shade represented by one of the ambassadors in the campaign.
It comes at a time when diversity is taking a central role in some markets in the retail of beauty products; market research firm Euromonitor International has noted the segment offers rising demand and growth potential.
“Multicultural beauty is being increasingly explored for future growth. This involves developing targeted lines and marketing strategies to target consumers from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds,” the firm explains in a recent report.
“Demographic shifts triggered by migration, flow of tourism, growing purchasing power of ethnic consumers in developed markets and urbanisation in emerging countries have been key demand drivers.”
L’Oréal: diversity centre stage
L’Oréal has indicated diversity is set to be a central focus for it in the coming years, with the company also looking at the issue from an internal perspective.
At the start of this year, it released its first ‘Worldwide Diversity at L’Oréal Report’, which examined the culture of diversity within the multinational and looked at how it could be improved.
Speaking of the #YoursTruly campaign, Adrien Koskas, L’Oréal Paris UK general manager, explained the push on diversity.
“L’Oréal Paris UK is both proud and excited to be launching such a unique and diverse campaign. With each true story being as unique as the shade that they represent, the #YoursTruly campaign is a declaration of equality and diversity for the L’Oréal Paris brand.”
